Description of the Unit – Students will observe Henri Rousseau’s paintings of tigers in the jungle with the objective of understanding foreground and background.
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Tag: visual art
6th Grade – Chuck Close-inspired Self Portraits
Description of the Unit – Students observed and discussed the work of contemporary American painter Chuck Close, a technically innovative artist known particularly for his large-scale photo-realist portraits. Students applied Close’s use of a grid to break down a self-portrait into individually colored squares that together create a cohesive whole.
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8th Grade – Chiaroscuro Drawing with CJ Hendry
Description of the Unit –
We begin by diving into the fascinating art of CJ Hendry. Hendry expresses having no formal art training and considers herself “not very creative.” Yet she’s a dedicated, innovative artist whose works are primarily hyper-realistic, large scale pencil drawings of (mostly) luxury objects that sometimes take 200 hours to complete. Working with pencil on paper her pieces are achieved through layers of what she refers to as scribbles. Watching her work (you can see some fun videos of her at work here: https://youtu.be/KB8vc9M4QWs and https://youtu.be/KixMpzhMS-o) students become awe-struck by the way her tireless pencil strokes beget such lifelike representations of real-life objects.
8th grade – watercolor & mixed media
Description of the Unit – This is a purely technical unit that allows students to explore combining watercolor painting techniques with other media.
4th Grade Surrealist Collage
Description of the Unit – Observing the work of several Surrealist collage artists, like Julien Pacaud, students will learn about the meaning of the term Surrealism, and how it is used in collage art. They will then go on to create their own weird, wild and wonderful collages, using varied sources such as books, magazines, and hand-made paper, while also including an image of themselves within the composition.
6th Grade – Frank Stella, Protractor Series Designs
Description of the Unit – Students will observe and discuss the work of Frank Stella, focusing particularly on his Protractor series, and will themselves use a protractor to create designs inspired by this series.
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4th Grade – Dioramas of Native Californians
Description of the Unit – To support their research of California’s first Americans, students worked in groups to create dioramas representing the lives of a particular tribe (assigned to their group).
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1st Grade – Bug on a Leaf
Description of the Unit – Students will explore creating a three-dimensional paper sculpture of a bug on a leaf. The bug and leaf will be embellished with all sorts of patterns and colors to reinforce these artistic elements.
Kindergarten – Picasso’s Dog Lump
Description of the Unit – It’s a fun experiment to introduce students this young to the concept of multiple perspectives. To approach this concept in a playful way, students created a Picasso-inspired oil pastel illustration of his beloved dog Lump.
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3rd Grade – Cityscape Mosaics inspired by Paul Klee
This is an exciting, multistep exploration of shape and color inspired by one of my favorite artists, Paul Klee. This unit is an extension of a previous one, which you can see here: https://anitasagastegui.com/2020/06/08/3rd-grade-paul-klees-magic-square-series/. The difference being that this time students are creating mosaic collages rather than drawings, so we emphasize the terms background, middle ground and foreground, as well an understanding of overlapping elements.
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In the K-8 Art Studio with Anita Sagastegui 